Corsair Obsidian 900D [Official Review]: The Ultimate Monster Cabinet

“Godzilla”, yes…you heard right. It is ‘a particularly enormous example of something’. That something can be related to many gigantic things like some hardware stuff, etc. Among them a monstrous cabinet is a fine example. Dear fellas, the Corsair Obsidian 900D, is something that exactly fits the definition of a ‘Godzilla’. The cabinet is not only meant for gaming purpose. It is a hardware gimmick with lots of possibilities and customization. You must be thinking, why we are calling it Godzilla? Don’t worry as TL got a very nice opportunity to review this monstrous cabinet officially, all thanks to Corsair, the Gaming Hardware Giant. Let’s have an insight to the Corsair Obsidian 900D.

Packaging and contents:

Unboxing the package, you’ll see the monster rig, which is packed with hard foam on the top and the bottom of the rig. After removing these protective foams you’ll have to just pull-out the plastic covering and then you’ll be stunned by the beauty of the case, which looks like state of the art. Sorry, beauty is a wrong word. Let’s say you will be amazed after seeing this enormous beast. With the package you will be provided a user manual along with different screws and wire patching.

Design and Build Quality:

The gaming rig is a “Super-Tower” case. If you’re a gamer you should have seen some “ugly Gaming Cabinets” but after having a glimpse of this rig, you’ll be stunned by the fact that any gaming-rig could be this beautiful. The front face of the case has got “brushed-aluminum” finish to resist scratches and fingerprints, which is removable, and the rest of the body is surrounded by “full cast-aluminum” – both combined together, giving a very premium and uniform look.

The dimensions are: 692mm x 252mm x 650mm. The sides of the case are beautifully designed. The side-panel window on the left cover lets you peep inside the case while showing-off. The other side of the case is also removable to help you patch the connecting wires. Again there is a display of masterpiece engineering where you’ve got grooves and patching space to neatly bind the wires, preventing any mess.

When talking about the inner architecture, no one gives as much useful and perfect design as Corsair. Every space is beautifully defined for maximum customization. This case has got a few centimeter ground clearances. The bottom of the case has rubber grips which enhance the stability of the case. Overall, the case is a monster but the looks of this tower case are like a Gentle-Man.

Interiors and Customization:

This cabinet can be heavily customized with 15-fans, 15-drive bays, 4-optical drives, 2-PSU and much more:

There is enough room to install 4-optical drives in your cabinet.

The case has got enough room for 15 hard-drives to fit inside it. The hard drives can fit inside the provided space of the tray. Each module has got three 3-loaders. The cabinet comes with 4 modules in which 12 flash drives can be installed. The best part is this where you can shift these modules to build space allowing more customization as per your desire.

The back side of the case has got space for serial ports and PCIe ports from the motherboard, where a single fan is pre-installed which can be replaced by a single (120mm or 140mm) fan.

The top of the case has similar vents where 4 fans (4 x 120mm), 3 fans (3 x 160mm) or a liquid cooling radiator can be rigged. These vents have removable magnetic dust-protector.

The other side-bottom can be loaded with 2 fans (2 x 140mm) or (2 x 120mm) (with 2-PSU installed). With one PSU you can have 4 fans (4 x 120mm) or 3 fans (3 x 140mm).

The top-front panel has your power and the restart button, below which there are 4 USB 2.0 and 2 USB 3.0 hubs along with headphone & microphone jack.

The front removable face has got 3 pre-loaded fans. The left side of the case has a transparent covering to give an insight of the hardware you have loaded, which is good for showing-off your customization to your fellas. Rig your interiors with LED’s of your desired color, and you will almost feel like having a true beast.

The cabinet has got space for 2-PSUs to suit your power need. The rear side of the cabinet has got vents for PSU cooling.

The mobo base is so large that, you can assemble an HPTX motherboard (that can house quadruple GPUs, two quad-core processors, 12x DDR3 RAM slots and 7x PCIe slots)

Overall, the cabinet allows serious customization to suit your gaming style. You can implement liquid-cooling, air-cooling, quadruple- GPU or a monster file server. This cabinet is not only limited for gaming, which is what makes it unique. It has got all the features of a gaming case keeping in mind for other useful features for heavy computing and productivity. So, this fantastic case offers you to build a customized system in order to suit your taste. The only thing that you may come across is that the drive bays may seem to be not up to the mark. You may feel like they do not match the standard of Obsidian 900D.

Specification:

Let’s have a look at the monstrous cabinet, Corsair Obsidian 900D:

Cooling:

When it comes to cooling, you will have a hard time finding any case offering that much flexibility in cooling customization. This PC offers almost any cooler to fit inside the cabinet to take-off the heat. You can fit in liquid-cooling and air cooling simultaneously. You have got 15-fan support. In the front ,3-fans is the intake while those vents on the top and the side of the cabinet are outlet areas which are heavily customizable:

Rear side: It has got a pre-installed fan which exhausts, below which there are enough vents to cool both the PSUs.

When talking about the ventilation, the Obsidian 900D offers a refined architecture which is not present in most of the cases available in the same price range. No one can imagine this much amount of cooling grids could fit inside this “tower case”. The credit goes to the fine engineering, as after placing the fans on every vent, you’ll still have enough space and clearance from other devices. The biggest problem with the vents is the deposition of dust inside the system. As of now, you might be thinking how much dusty your system will get with this much amount of vents. Well, that’s the part where Corsair beats the other manufacturers, as the former has provided a magnetic net which sticks to the vents to allow the passage of air but no dust can go through. Also, these magnetic nets could be easily removed and cleaned, for optimum cooling.

Why Obsidian 900D?

That’s the question most of the people need to ask while surfing the net for some info on this chassis. Why would one need to tame a tiger for providing over-watch if a simple dog would be enough? The answer is simple. The tiger would be more powerful. Similarly, the beasty 900D has enormous room to house dual-PSUs, quadruple-GPUs, dual-CPUs, 15 fans, five radiators, four optical drives and 15 HDDs. In other words, the case is ideal to house a mega-monstrous rig. But then again, who needs it? The audience is actually limited. To be frank, we don’t think this cabinet is necessary for general people, even most of the gaming freaks who are craving to build a high-end system. But yes, if you are into heavy benchmarking or film-editing, we blindly recommend the Obsidian 900D, as it can suit all your needs.

#Pros

Can be built into any system to suit your taste: A file-server, a gaming-beast or a multipurpose CPU.

Supports the HPTX motherboard (Which Supports quadruple GPU)

Almost any cooling configuration can be installed

Gigantic chassis to pack numerous components

Monolithic design

#Cons:

Bulky and uneasy to transport

Very expensive

Final verdict

Corsair Obsidian 900D, at a price tag of INR 27K, may not be an option for most of the gamers, as their requirements can be easily fulfilled even with other cabinets available at a price range of 15k. But like we said earlier, this enormous case can easily suit all the needs of people who are involved in heavy-benchmark stuff, film-editing and animation. To be honest, we could not find any competitors that can match the standards of this super-tower case. Yes, it may be expensive but at the same time it offers quality along with quantity. In other words, the Obsidian 900D is worth its price.

REVIEW OVERVIEW

Design

Features

Cooling

Customization

Price

SUMMARY

Ideal for people involved in hardcore-benchmark stuff, graphics designing, film-editing and animation